


The Science-Fiction Constant

by shakespeareaddict



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, Feminism, Fluff, Newt is a Trekkie and Helga likes Star Wars, Rule 63, Slice of Life, Some Humor, but kinda softcore feminism, thankfully they both love Firefly, this leads to many arguments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareaddict/pseuds/shakespeareaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason everyone dreads leading tour groups through a lab that might contain Geiszler and Gottlieb.</p>
<p>A brief two-scene slice of life piece, set sometime after the movie, with Newt and Hermann as Newt and Helga, lesbian scientists working at an unidentified university.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Science-Fiction Constant

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what the summary says. Knowledge of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Firefly is not necessary to enjoy this fic; below are the most important references. Also have I mentioned how much I love this pairing, Rule 63'd or not?
> 
> Duchess Satine refers to a minor Star Wars character who appears in the Clone Wars cartoons briefly. Amanda Grayson is Spock's mother on Star Trek. The "Dark Age of Trek", as Newt calls it, refers to the fact that in my opinion, while the latest two Trek movies weren't bad when considered outside the franchise, they're frankly awful when considered next to The Original Series (TOS), especially considered from even a softcore feminist perspective.
> 
> Inara, Zoe, Kaylee, and River are the four main characters who are female of the show Firefly; Jayne, Mal, and Wash are other main characters, and Saffron is a female character who appears twice. "Heart of Gold" is the second-to-last filmed episode, which ends with a beautiful a cappella rendition of "Amazing Grace", a very emotional song for any TOS fan like me.

When it came to orienting new lab assistants and showing them any of the eight labs on campus, all of which Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler might be using at any given time for no apparent reason, the administrative staff in the various science and mathematics departments tended to draw straws for the duty, or use it as the terms of a particularly high-stakes bet; when selected they often tried to call in sick on that day, or desperately foist it off on another staff member through clever bribes and offers to take on eight or nine extra shifts.

Unfortunately for her, Miranda was too professional (or too stupid) to try the common coping mechanisms. Instead, when she drew the duty, she took it with a resigned sigh and checked her stash of emergency vodka—the likelihood of her needing it after dealing with _that_ particular power couple on a bad day was somewhere around two or three hundred percent.

On good days, though, it was actually kind of cool to see them work together. Gottlieb and Geiszler, the women who had drifted with the Kaiju hivemind and not only survived, but used the information gained to help save the world—they were obviously scarily intelligent. On their own they had performed incredible feats—programming for the first drift interfaces, a DNA sequencer for Kaiju, and a score of other achievements. Their powers of observation combined transformed them into something else, like they were still in the drift, (which was silly, as all drift interfaces were monitored by one world government or another…probably) only with just one another instead of with the hivemind in between them. On good days they shouted questions and bounced theories off each other from across the room, or discussed philosophy side-by-side while observing an experiment’s final stages. They were very good on good days, better than most teams of forty people could hope to ever be. They just had spectacularly bad timing from a PR point of view, and almost never had good days that coincided with any sorts of lab tours.

For once, though, it seemed they _were_ having a good day. As Miranda stepped into the lab ahead of her ten-person tour group, feeling out the environment, Geiszler—Newt, as she insisted on being called—said to Gottlieb over two tables, “I take your Duchess-slash-Queen Satine and raise you one Amanda Grayson.”

Without looking away from the calculations she was reviewing, a nervous graduate research assistant watching her expression like a hawk for some sign of her opinions, Gottlieb replied, “If you intend to turn our reasonable comparison of fictional female characters into another one of your overblown lectures where you insist that Amanda Grayson is somehow our genetically-engineered child from over two hundred years in the speculative, glitzy, and overly optimistic future conceptualized in _Star Trek_ —“

“As much as I still believe I’m right on that front, I promise not to start that argument again. Publicly.” By this time, Miranda had ushered in the new lab assistants, a few of whom were in the running for positions attached to one of the many projects the gently bickering scientists were running. A relatively soft-core iteration of the eternal _Star Wars_ v. _Star Trek_ debate was the least they’d have to worry about, Miranda reasoned. “But even in the Dark Ages of _Trek_ writing when she’s relegated to black-hole-fodder, Amanda Grayson is a downright badass. An underappreciated badass, for sure—“ Newt cut herself off, catching sight of Miranda and the awestruck students crowding the door.

“Helga, look! New people!” she crowed, dashing for Miranda immediately. Gottlieb pointedly ignored her wife, instead circling parts of the calculations, to the abject despair of the grad responsible for the work. A few other assistants and researchers had stepped forward to eye the new recruits already, though many restrained themselves to mere head-nods of acknowledgement.

Newt stopped in front of the potentials, taking them in with what would be on a normal person a manic look. For Newt, at least to Miranda, this seemed more like mild interest. “Dr. Geiszler,” she said formally, “I’d like to introduce you to the potential lab assistants for your various projects with Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Hi!” Newt beamed, giving a cheery little wave. “You guys can call me Newt. I’m not big on titles, unlike Helga.”

“ _The_ Doctor Newton Geiszler?” one star-struck student asked.

“Doctor Helga _Gottlieb_?” demanded another almost simultaneously.

Before Miranda could hear the reaction of the rest of the hopefuls, the lab in general, Newt herself, or Gottlieb, Roy rushed into the lab. “Miranda!” he said, clearly relieved. “I’ve been looking all over for you! We’ve got a paper jam, and we’d usually call in Maintenance because you’re busy, but they’ve been so backed up lately—“

Miranda was already moving to the door. “You don’t mind if I leave them here with you for ten minutes?” she asked Newt.

Newt shook her head, hair escaping from her ponytail like inmates from a poorly-constructed jail, already fixated on her next topic of interest. “We can keep these guys safe. Helga! Come on, meet the newbies!”

A waspish “They’re not our new assistants yet, Newton,” was the last snatch of the conversation Miranda heard before the door shut behind her and she turned her mind to the paper jam. It was a good day; what could possibly go wrong in ten minutes, even in the lab of Newton Geiszler?

Twenty minutes later, she’d regret thinking that.

* * *

Twenty- _five_ minutes later, Newt pulled the handkerchief away from her face and winced at the bloodstains. Those were _definitely_ bigger than they’d been the last time she’d checked.

“Did you _have_ to use your goddamn cane to smash in my nose?” she demanded of the woman sitting, extremely stiff-postured, next to her.

“You attacked me,” Helga replied, tone as rigid as her spine. “It was self-defense.”

Newt tried not to sigh, because a) even talking kind of hurt right now and deep breaths were probably not a good idea either, and b) it would only make Helga’s posture tighter. She knew it was probably painful for Helga to sit so straight and so tense in the first place—no, scratch that, it was a _scientific fact_ that it was painful, memories from their drifts leaping at Newt, and it was a fairly plausible hypothesis that Newt was mostly the cause for said posture. She didn’t want to add to the growing guilt by making Helga’s pain any worse, especially when Helga had been doing so well this last week.

So “Sorry,” she said, before adding immediately after, “I did warn you, though. And I couldn’t _not_ do it. No self-respecting TOS fan could let a slight like that pass—“

“You’re not some perpetually half-drunk engineer of dubious Scottish origin, and I’m not in garish makeup with plastic appendages glued to my face in a failed attempt to convince the audience that I am anything but human,” Helga snapped.

Newt rolled her eyes, recognizing that pursing this line of conversation counted as making it worse but going ahead anyway. “You not only said the _Millennium Falcon_ is better than the _Enterprise_ , you said the _Enterprise_ is a useless ship with no logical propulsion system—like anything from your Jedi-infested preferred science fiction world makes scientific sense, either.”

“You claimed I was akin to a _biologist_ simply for enjoying a fictional reality in which a mystical bacterium is the reason life can exist at all—which is, first of all, a gross oversimplification of the _Star Wars_ canon regarding the Force mythos. Additionally, it is entirely nonsensical, as enjoyment of a franchise does not equate to belief in its plot devices and characters, despite what you may believe about Amanda Grayson, and finally, such a statement is _extremely_ insulting. As you well know.”

Helga actually sounded emotionally _wounded_ , for once, and that kept Newt from saying anything else she would regret within the hour or week. She felt pretty petty, for _actually attacking_ Helga like she was some five-year-old on the playground, for doing it not only in front of her colleagues, but also in the _middle of a tour_ for potential new lab assistants, which they do kind of need, for making her wife so uncomfortable when that was the most relaxed Helga’s been in months—in short, she feels petty for a lot of reasons. What sort of shitty spouse _is_ she?

Sure, Newt and Helga survived being the entire K-Sci division of the Anchorage and Hong Kong Shatterdomes for three years, and yeah, considering the amount of work they did entirely on their own during that time, having five research projects running simultaneously with teams of ten or more other professors and postdocs and grads and undergrads on even the smallest of their projects is actually not bad at all. But Helga’s been stressed about it since the beginning of the previous semester, when they added on three of those projects. Newt’s been trying to get her to relax ever since, finally managing it with a weekend marathon of the best _Trek_ and _Star Wars_ movies that left Helga—well, not exactly as good as she could be, but bickering about the relative merits of their favorite serieses (seri?) is a step up from having Helga obsess over literally _every_ detail of their projects.

And then Newt had to go and ruin it, only four days later. Not only had she run the risk of hurting Helga physically (though Newt’s more injured than the mathematician; her poor diet choices and Helga’s fairly regular PT sessions have created a big gap in their relative fitness), over a life-changing-but-insignificant-when-considered-besides-certain-math-geeks _TV show_ , she’s also embarrassed Helga, possibly scared off all their potential new lab assistants before they even have a chance to start working, and definitely caused Helga to go all tense and uncomfortable, which always makes her leg worse.

God, she’s such an ass sometimes.

Worse, Newt doesn’t always know how to make it better, like right now, which she’s found is more important in a relationship than not screwing up in the first place, so for a while she sits in gloom before thinking of something that might help. Gently she nudges Helga’s shoulder with her own. “Hey,” she says through a wad of handkerchief, “Inara, huh?”

Helga doesn’t turn to look at her, doesn’t _really_ relax either, but she does dart an almost-glance at Newt out of her peripheral, expression morphing from complete blankness into the familiar mix of confusion and reluctant indulgence Helga often wears when Newt’s being particularly weird. “And how does the Joss Whedon equivalent of a high-class futuristic escort qualify as an example of positive female portrayal in the media?”

“She’s not ashamed of who she is or what she does, even though some people are uncomfortable with it,” Newt pointed out. “She’s professional, but still compassionate, towards her clients and her friends. She doesn’t let her personal attachments affect her work. And, also, she can kick some serious ass even though she’s ‘just’ a pretty face. Also also, she serves both male and female clients, and probably non-binary clients as well, and everyone else comments only briefly on it, so. Yay for cool LGBT representation in media before it was cool.”

Helga turned her head incrementally, enough to pretend she was making an effort at looking Newt in the eyes. The whole no-eye-contact thing was just one of Helga’s _things_ , like her thing for coffee only at night if at all, and never decaf, though the no-eye-contact thing was a bit less endearing than the coffee thing. “And what do you make of Jayne’s obvious sexualization of Inara and her female client?”

Newt shrugged, careful not to jostle Helga too much. “We know by that point Jayne’s a bit of a horny jerk. Lovable from an audience standpoint, but almost nothing he says can be taken seriously.”

Helga nodded, the screws in her spine finally turned a few increments towards the lefty-loosey side of things. Newt silently promised to give her a thorough massage later, to get rid of all the new knots she’d put there a few moments ago. “You make a compelling argument, and I agree with your analysis. Personally, however, when it comes to positive female portrayals in that particular franchise, I would think Zoe is the more reasonable choice.”

“Indeed,” Newt said, affecting an overly-serious voice. “Pray tell, Doctor Gottlieb, why would you choose Zoe over Inara?”

Helga finally started looking at Newt again. Newt tried to contain her joy—she might’ve been momentarily forgiven, but she hadn’t fixed anything yet. “Though subordinate to Mal,” Helga began, “such subordination is out of respect, not obedience, a respect engendered through their shared experiences and history, and she is equally as physically and psychologically capable as her captain, if not more so. Certainly she appears more emotionally capable than he; while she is married to a man she does appear to love, and is unafraid of showing such love, Mal frequently ignores his glaringly obvious attraction to Inara. As to her marriage itself, the relationship does not appear to take away from her strong character, but rather adds to it, showing that, though she may seem masculine due to her gruff style and combat skills, commonly considered ‘masculine’ traits,  she still proudly retains some of her femininity, enough to desire the supposedly ‘universal’ want of women: motherhood.”

“Hmm, all very true, very true,” Newt said, continuing in that mock-serious voice and drawing out a quirk of Helga’s mouth for her efforts. “But are you certain that her desire for children doesn’t weaken her as a character?”

Helga scoffed. “Did you not watch ‘Heart of Gold’? That is an entirely rhetorical question—I recall you weeping at the end.”

“She was singing ‘Amazing Grace’,” Newt insisted indignantly, switching the hand holding the bloody tissue in place. “That is a very intense song for me.”

Helga nodded, a ghost of a grin lingering around her pretty lips. “Exactly. Surely you remember not only the vocal accompaniment at the end, but also the scene where she demonstrates her desire for a child? Though her husband no doubt emotionally supports her whenever necessary, it is _he_ who is most often in need of such support. While she is not afraid of the consequences their dangerous lives could have on a child they bring into the Verse, Wash is so terrified that he cannot even conceptualize the idea of bringing said child into the Verse in the first place. While her desire separates her from the men around her, it does not do so in a demeaning way, but rather a strengthening one.”

Newt wondered, briefly, if Helga identified more with Wash or Zoe in that scene, had in fact wondered it the last time they re-watched that particular episode together, sometime after their honeymoon; but that was a discussion for another time, after Newt was sure she had made up for _this_ particular Geiszlerian fuck-up. So instead of asking, Newt smiled at Helga and said, “Oh, baby, keep talking media analysis at me, please.”

As Newt had expected, Helga bristled briefly like a cat before calming down, thankfully even less tense than before. “Will you please cease calling me demeaning ‘pet names’?” she drawled.

“If that’s what it takes to hear you dissect Kaylee and River and Saffron and any other women who appear on-screen long enough to analyze, sure,” Newt said. “I’ll keep away from those pet names for at least a month.”

Helga finally granted her wife a real smile, involuntary and small but undeniably fond and talked media analysis at Newt in the waiting room until a nurse arrived to make sure that Newt’s nose wasn’t really broken.


End file.
